Speaking at an event in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, Barack Obama addressed both the long history of persecution that led Jewish people to seek refuge and build a homeland, and what he described as Israel's treatment of Palestinians and its military conduct in Gaza.
At Queen's University Belfast — where he was awarded an honorary doctorate — Obama sat down with journalist Susan McKay and put forward the view that military strength and technological advantage alone cannot provide Israel with durable security. The remarks reignited questions about how Israel can protect its population from ongoing threats while building a lasting presence in the region.
Obama pointed to centuries of persecution, oppression, and violence directed at Jewish people, attributing a substantial portion of that history to European societies. He also remarked that Jews had understandably sought a place of refuge, while separately contending that those who fled persecution in Europe had displaced Palestinians from their land in the process of establishing a new home — a position Obama has articulated as part of a broader historical account of the region's competing claims.
Obama put forward the view that depending on armed force alone — without any readiness to offer concessions — could secure short-term gains at the cost of the conditions necessary for durable peace, a stance he grounded in his assessment that Israel had forfeited its moral standing. Those remarks were made against the backdrop of the October 7, 2023, assault, during which Hamas operatives crossed into Israeli territory, killing a number of civilians and seizing others as hostages.
Obama pointed to the wave of condemnation directed at Israel in the wake of the killings as underlining the need for a genuine halt to fighting and a renewed push toward a durable resolution. Comments from Obama describing Israeli land acquisition as the product of mass displacement drew pushback from a range of pro-Israel voices.
Land in what became the modern state of Israel was transferred to early settlers through purchase agreements negotiated with private landowners operating under Ottoman jurisdiction. The 1948 war drove more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes — though historians note that a portion had already fled before combat reached their areas — while roughly 800,000 Jews were simultaneously uprooted from neighbouring Arab countries and absorbed into the newly established state of Israel.
The former president directed remarks toward Palestinians as well, stating that armed resistance would not be enough to overcome Israel's battlefield capabilities. Obama told Palestinians that military escalation against Israelis was not a path to victory, and urged them to pursue political goals through nonviolent means instead.
He went further by noting that millions of Israelis and Palestinians are bound to share the same land for the foreseeable future, and that both groups bear responsibility for thinking through what a livable future might look like for the generations that follow them. Acknowledging that both parties carry the weight of hard decisions, the remarks also drew attention to questions about how norms of international restraint apply to a government facing armed threats — a tension his comments on Israel's conduct left unresolved.
Keeping another large-scale attack from happening while also safeguarding its population and maintaining durable security arrangements represents the core dilemma facing Israeli policymakers — one that goes well beyond any straightforward question of whether to hold back militarily. The killings drew attention to what happens when a group with the capacity for coordinated, large-scale violence retains its operational footing near civilian populations.
His years in the White House left a complicated legacy on the question of Israel — robust collaboration on military and intelligence matters coexisted with political friction that led a considerable portion of Israelis and pro-Israel voices to question whether his administration's backing of Israel was adequate. Throughout his two terms, the administration channelled billions of dollars in defence funding toward Israel, deepened joint work on missile defence systems, and formalised a ten-year security assistance package worth $38 billion in 2016.
Three policy flashpoints — endorsement of the Iran nuclear deal, repeated friction with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Palestinian statehood and the expansion of Jewish settlements, and the administration's decision to abstain from a UN Security Council vote on Israeli settlements in December 2016 — attracted criticism from groups that considered themselves defenders of Israel's interests. Surveyed in 2013, roughly 37 percent of Jewish Israelis described Obama's stance toward their country as friendly, with just over half placing his posture somewhere in the middle ground between support and opposition.
